


The Four Faces of Loss

by Lumakiri



Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Gen, Linked Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22632877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumakiri/pseuds/Lumakiri
Summary: The Hero of Time had met loss four times. As a child bereaved of a father, a young soldier robbed of a childhood, a hero stripped of his victory and as finally as an old friend.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 48





	The Four Faces of Loss

He seemed so small, hands pressed tight against ancient hide. The vast monolith stretched far above him, its thousand arms reaching across the length and breadth of its domain. Every breath of breeze snatched quickly withered fingers and tore them off into the dusk. Brittle licks of skin broke off into his palms as he shook, desperate and panicked, against the only kind of father he’d ever known. The tiny, frail voice bubbled through the blossoms and thorns, pleading, begging for the eyes that had seen millenia to open, and the jaws that had sealed his kind’s most sacred temple to move again in familiar warmth. Quiet hysteria rose into agitated demands, made in forest tongue and man-speak, lilted with the lisp of a child who’d not yet learned what sounds were his own. He was only a child, a seedling naught ten summers old. And what was death to a child whose brethren never grew old? The wildflowers would open again each year without fail, surely his father would do the same? As the woods turned rosy and shed themselves come autumn to renew in the spring, this must be the same for the greatest king of them all.

But this wasn’t the same. He knew not how, but he felt it in his chest, a raw and suffocating pain that rose in his throat like a bile and burst out in a scream. In the height of midsummer, all he felt was frost, cold, consuming. It dripped from his lungs to his fingertips and he retched as though trying to expel the gathering guilt and shame in his belly. If only he had been faster, stronger, perhaps he could’ve prevented all this. He had been summoned, he had been trusted, what an honor, what a responsibility, in which he felt he had utterly failed. How could his father tell him he had excelled, how could he bestow upon him the stone to protect, when he could not save the guardian who protected all? How could he possibly save a country he did not even know the face of, when he had failed here in his own home? 

A home no longer. They would not have him back, not after this. What would Saria think of him? For her evergreen smile to break and crumble like his own, the thought brought a fresh wave of tears. Ugly sobs of hot, salted streaks that stung his cheeks and clung to his skin. He had sunk to his knees and curled up in the knot of limbs at his guard’s feet, where he lied wishing they would swallow him up and take him into the earth, so his father might be revived. But no matter how tightly he withdrew into them, they did not secede, and his tears did not lessen. He might’ve lied there minutes, maybe hours, he did not remember anymore.

That was the first time he had known loss. It had been a creeping, slow-burned introduction, as his innocence realised what it was to slumber without wake. It had withered and died, like his father, as he understood the fate of all the creatures that had met his blade. Every soul would succumb to it, if even a vast vessel of life like him could simply end in an instant. It pervaded his dreams, terrible nightmares of Saria and his Kokiri siblings wilting away into the dark. It was his penance, he knew, for every life he took in the name of the gods. Did the Deku cry when his father had died? Did the scrubs he’d slain have brothers like he did in the forest, that would never see them again? The strange insects, the savage wolves, the bats in the night? Did the desert man, he who had condemned his own father to his fate, have a family? They breathed the same air and drank the same water, what made any of them different to him? He was told over and over, of the importance of his quest, of his duty, of the will of the gods.

By the second time Link knew loss, he did not think of these things anymore. It did no good, served no purpose, to turn over and over each score on his blade in his head. He had tucked away the child in the forest, deep in his chest and mind. When he woke again in that cold, empty temple, he was perfect. Lithe, strong, swift. He killed as easily as a soldier who’d fought a dozen wars. He made sure the facade never slipped, the valiant hero of the beaten and the damned never wavered. Each and every old friend he bid goodbye to as they ascended was a fresh blow to his guard, but he stood firm. These losses, he wore them as his armor. He was proud to serve his country. Every medallion a symbol of his power, his courage, his virtue. This time, he did not fail. He saved the princess. He slew the desert man on his tower of stone. The Hero shone victorious at the end of a path of bloodshed and brokenness. 

And then it was undone. He was sent tumbling back through seven years of suffering, of repression, of hidden fear and turned cheek. Once again, he woke in an empty temple, but this time stripped bare of his armor. The tiny boy, the grieving child, viciously ripped from his nest at the back of his mind and brought violently to its forefront. Memories blunted by time and emotions dulled by experience were now fresh and vicious wounds. The gurgle of blood that frothed from the dark king’s throat was as thunderous as the creaking last breath of his father. All he could see was death, all he could taste on his tongue was rot and decay at the back of his throat. Then, came the third time, a sudden and unjust punishment for taking death into his own hands. She left him, his only guiding light, his mother-figure fae. His words to his father had been mewls of mercy, of bargaining, of disbelief and fear, spoken in the tongue of men and woodland. But to his mother were howls of pure anger, of vitriol, of hate and misunderstanding. He was not a forest-child anymore, not a seedling of the Deku tree, rooted to the earth and wood and moss, but a product of Hylia. Stateless, a waif of the towns and fields, an orphan for the second time in his life. She left and took with her everything that had tied him to his childhood and bound him to his country. He had no purpose, no meaning, just anger, confusion, and an overwhelming fear of the power love and its absence had over him.

So he had left, in defiance of his god given role. Finding her was the only way he could begin again, to heal and learn to live a life that had no predestined purpose. The fourth time, he greeted loss as its equal. He healed others of their regrets, guided them to a peace he had yet to find himself. Time had taken so much from him, so he took back control of it, bent it to his will to save a country the goddesses had forsaken. He saw himself in its face, a mask of his own making. No longer a scared child, nor a courageous warrior, but a young man with old eyes. When he finally left that place, on the fourth day of the fourth time, he rode home with armour again, grief on his right shoulder and death on his left. Not of divine make, of golden power and dizzying courage, but hewn from his own patchwork history and decorated with the symbols of his forest, his country, and his future. 


End file.
